This Does Have A Point

"I'm very leery about chiropractors" we said, sitting in the corner of the the examination room. We never wanted to resort to this, but after trying so much, after so many years, the pain just won't go away.

We finally have affordable healthcare, and chiropractic care is covered. As a student we fall into a certain demographic. Sorry, Republicans, we work in the summer, and flourish as "a" full-time "mature student" with physical and mental health issues...just hoping to get the education you require to get a better paying job so we don't have to be a "burden" your precious pocketbook (don't worry, aside from grants for school, we're not suckling at any of your other social service teats). A culinary arts degree (which we have) is worthless in this country, to make an actual living, if you don't live in the right city...never mind the physical limitations that make it nearly impossible to pursue. (You probably don't even understand how much not being able to cook for a living can crush you when it's the only passion you've ever known.)

We've had sporadic massage therapy over the last many years since the car accident, to relieve the pain from all of the permanent physical damage caused. Over the years, generally, the only things we've been told about chiropractors is that they do more bad than good, they make you "dependent". Being dependent is not our modus operandi, so we've tried a lot of things to relieve the pain (exercise, physical therapy, drugs, alcohol, massage therapy, massage chairs...all at different times and variances - some might say just a different kind of dependency).

Thursday we finally met with a chiropractor. This being a small town there is only one. She was...really nice. Amazing, actually, considering how many times we not-so-subtly mentioned we don't exactly feel comfortable with, or trust, people in her profession.
"You make people 'dependent'", is what we said.
"I hear that a lot." she said, "But what I do is make people realize what 'good' feels like, and once people learn what 'good' feels like, and they don't feel good anymore, they come back".
Well, it was hard to argue with.

She did really unnerving things to our body...

At one point she couldn't do whatever it is that her people do to necks because working her way to the top alerted all of the instincts. SHE'S GOING TO SNAP OUR NECK! WE'LL DIE!
Nobody can relax after that...

But everything else she was able to do...
She did things that make us giggle in the strange way that getting shots, blood drawn, and glaucoma tests make us respond. It's really embarrassing, the giggling. Snapping, cracking...oy...and then the giggling.

Now that it's over, skeptical, as always...we'll wait to see what happens...(there's another appointment scheduled for Tuesday). [though, we woke up feeling a bit different than usual this morning...a little more "fluid" in motion...while it didn't last all day, it was something.]

It might take awhile...all of the tightness in our muscles, all of the spinal and disk issues that have been persisting for years now, has caused the inner-workings of this body to work insufficiently. What must it be like to be relatively pain free? The memory doesn't even exist.

"Usually when I mention this pain people say 'Oh, you're just getting old, that's normal'", I say. "Is this how people in their early 30's feel? Because when I hear this I feel like screaming "THEN WHY ISN'T EVERYBODY ANGRY ALL OF THE TIME?!".

She laughs. She has had her hands on our body. She had expressed concern that we've, I've, had to deal with all the things she had felt in our muscles and around our spine.

"...'Why doesn't everybody else have anger issues?!" she laughs again "...no, it's not normal for your age.", she says.

She says that at 50 or 60 years of age it could be pretty bad, but this bad at this age shouldn't be a reality.

Our muscles are unnaturally tight, inflamed and tender from compensating for injuries that went too long before they were attended to (thanks to being "lost" or '"neglected" too long in a healthcare system, in more than once country). The body finds a way, but it's not always a productive or healthy way.

It'll be interesting to see if this new "therapy" will work. We don't even remember what it feels like to be pain-free in anymore (this December will be 10 years since the accident). If this new therapy doesn't work, it doesn't...but we'll still keep on striving to not be some stereotype by some assholes...no matter how much pain we're in.

This story has no real point...other than to illustrate many things about people who some might be considered a leech on society, and some might consider overreacting about the physical pain they suffer.

Maybe this does have a point. Maybe the point is that you shouldn't judge people just because they're on a "social assistance" of some sort, just because you can't see or understand anything outside of your own experience. Just because you don't know how to feel sympathy or empathy, doesn't make you right. It actually makes you a pretty big asshole.

We're In Love With a Chair...

This is not an advertisement, we are not being paid to talk about or promote this product.

It's a chair.
(<- not that chair)

As many may know we several permanent and degenerative back and spine problems from a terrible collision with a semi-truck on an interstate in '04, followed by terrible medical care. So back pain is a plaguing problem every day, some days worse than others. Pain killers are ineffective, and we can't afford the massage therapy required to ease much of the pain, or some of the causes of it.
However, this doesn't prevent us from being physically active...we work out a lot (about 5 hours total a week), we lift things, sling things, skin and butcher deer ('tis the season)...in between sitting on our ass doing nothing.
These activities are not without their additional tole on the back, spine and muscles.

At the university we are attending there is a private quiet meditation room free for students to use for 15 minutes (or more, if nobody is waiting) to provide some quiet time to relax and de-stress.
In this room is the most wonderful chair in the world.
A massage chair.
And not just any massage chair...
The Human Touch ThermoStretch® HT-7120 Massage Chair...

(It even comes in brown <3!)

We got a little freaked out the first time we used it, when the massage portion that works on your skull. It actually feels like human fingers (THERE ARE LITTLE PEOPLE SEWN INTO THE CHAIR!! [not really]).

The whole experience is...amazing. At a price of $3000 dollars it better be. Thankfully we have free use of it whenever we're on campus, for at least the next 1.5-2 years; but, you know...if you're looking to buy your favourite bloggers a Christmas gift...;-)

The love for this chair, that gave us a massage without any perceived reluctance, expectations of payment or...expectations of anything else...got us thinking.

What with all the "tools for single life" (yeah, we're talking sex toys, for the..."single people")...and this chair...and social media for "companionship"...who really needs dating anymore...

Ha! We jest...but not about that chair.
We're going to file for a marriage licence.

Butcher And The Boar...A Restaurant Review of Meaty Proportion

We're in Minneapolis until tomorrow (for reasons we'll write about tomorrow), in the meantime James secured a good deal on a one hour massage at a place called Keep in Touch Massage (http://www.keepintouchmassage.net/) with a great masseuse named Ben. We had a brutally painful deep tissue massage (they are supposed to be painful) that was better than the last few years of massage therapists we've had. We highly recommend him.

After the massage we went to dinner at an interesting little place we found perusing http://www.citypages.com/restaurants/ called Butcher and The Boar (http://butcherandtheboar.com/). Butcher and The Boar, a 2013 James Beard Award Semifinalist for Best New Restaurant, is in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, and specializes in house smoked/preserved meats (Charcuterie), craft beers, and Bourbon.

While we did not partake in the alcoholic offerings this time around, we took the meats head on.

The host and hostesses of Butcher and The Boar are friendly as they great you at the door. As they take you into the restaurant you are greeted with tasteful decor, comfortable surrounds and music at just the right volume, as you pass by the bar into the dining area, which are separated by large panes of glass. The feel of dining room is not so much restaurant, and dining hall. Think German Beer Hall.
The smell, like walking into a bottle of Liquid Smoke, divine.
While there were women present, the clientele appears overwhelming males ages 24 and up; the environment undoubtedly masculine, without being pushy. It all makes sense really: beer, bourbon and meat heaven...it's like man mecca.

The service was prompt and courteous, not overly friendly, which for diners like us, was pretty nice. Not everybody wants waitstaff that are obviously disingenuous - we like our servers attentive, without being familiar.
A woman, not waitstaff, came around and silently kept the water glasses full, while the waiter left us with our food and conversation. Perfect.

The only real complaint about the service, which is a direct reflection of the menu, was related to the two dishes ordered that contained nuts - one peanuts, one pecans; only once we were served the dish that contained peanuts (Stuffed Jalapenos ~ yes, you read that right) did the staff who delivered it say there were peanuts in it, and we actually had to ask what was on the dish containing pecans (the gratin on the Coal Fired Sweet Potatoes, as they cleared away the plates). Thankfully we don't have nut allergies, but our mind was on those who do, and also the liability of the restaurant.

Overall though the food was amazing, platters of pickled items, expertly smoked and preserved meats accompanied by vegetables, sauces and mustard - what's not to love.

House Pickle Plate with
Pickled Heart & Beef Heart

James doesn't like pickled things so we took on the House Pickle Plate "solo" and added Pickled Egg & Beef Heart for the extra $2 (if you are an avid reader of our cooking entries and recipes, you know we have a thing for animal hearts). Broken down item by item the least favourite thing on the Pickle Plate was the beets, but that's just because we prefer the lighter (less clove) taste of the ones we pickle. The best thing on the plate turned out to be the Pickled Egg, and the Beef Heart; the pickled eggs not too strong, and the pickled heart, something we had never tried, was such a unique texture for heart, and not overly pickled. Forcing James to try select item, he was pleasantly surprised, particularly regarding the heart - he is not a fan of that delicious offal - saying that the pickled preparation is probably the only way we could get him to eat heart in the future.

We must not forget to mention the Stuffed Jalapenos, which were not at all as expected, in that they were inspiring and unique. Stuffed with a smooth peanut butter mixture, and garnished with golden raisins and feta, the Stuffed Jalapenos were a surprise, a spicy sweet treat. To be honest, had the menu said they contained peanut butter we probably would not have tried them. (but that still doesn't justify the non-disclosure of the peanuts by menu or waitstaff)

Stuffed Jalapenos

Bring on the Charcuterie!

Instead of choosing one of their several main course meat offerings, we opted to go big and order both the Butcher Sampler, and the Sausage Sampler to share, and James chose the Coal Fired Sweet Potatoes, and Skillet Cornbread, as sides.

The Butcher Sampler, a platter of house preserved meats served cold, was our primary choice, the offering included Turkey Braunschweiger, Texas Wild Boar Ham, Red Wattle Sausage, Rooster Terrine, and Wild Boar Head Cheese. Of all the items the Head Cheese, which is what sold the sampler, and the Braunschweiger, were our favorites; though the Braunschweiger, in it's luxuriously smooth texture, was very rich - half the amount of it would have sufficed (but then, these platters are meant to be shared among a table, so...). While the various accompaniments, pickled and crunchy, clearly have their place in cutting the heaviness of the fat on the tongue and cleaning the palate a bit, to make way for each new selection, every item is worthy of naked enjoyment.

Butcher Sampler
Left to Right: Rooster Terrine, Wild Boar Head Cheese, Texas Wild Boar Ham, Red Wattle Sausage, Turkey Braunschweiger - served with crisps

A quick primer on some "strange" things:
Braunschweiger - a liverwusrt, a pâté made of mashed livers
Head Cheese - made from boiling pieces of the head, feet and/or tongue of an animal until it is jellied and then formed into a loaf.
Terrine - a pressed loaf of loosely chopped meat.

James' pick, The Sausage Sampler, a trio of house smoked sausages: Wild Boar Hot Link, Texas Beef Link, and Berkshire Pork & Cheddar, is an experience. A plate with three large juicy sausages with a very spicy Dijon English mustard called Zataran to be paired with the Wild Boar, and other sauces and veggie mixtures. A plate of smoked meat to behold.

Of all the offerings the Wild Boar Hot Link turned out to be both his, and our, favourite. A nice balance between the smooth cheesy Pork & Cheddar, and the Beef. We both found the Pork to be a bit gamier than we anticipated (at first thinking it the Boar), but nonetheless delicious.

Sausage Sampler

The sides James ordered only got enough of a taste from us to ascertain that they were indeed very, very, good. As he liberally spread the smooth mapley buttery mixture onto his large skillet corn bread, we lusted after it, cursing our midsection.
The Coal Fired Sweet Potatoes were topped with a sweet pecan gratin covering a perfectly smooth and buttery interior encased in a charred skin.
The mouth salivates at the memory.

Skillet Cornbread

Coal Fired Sweet Potatoes

This amount of food was far more than enough for two people, half of each sausage came back to the hotel room with us and James was forbidden to order dessert, because while it may not look like it based on this eating experience, we are on a diet - a high protein, low-carb/gluten diet, so this restaurant fit nicely into our diet). Otherwise we would have welcomed the dessert menu, which looked amazing, with open arms and drooling mouth.

Bottom line, if you love smoked meat, or meat in general, beer, and bourbon. A good atmosphere and new eating experiences, check out Butcher and The Boar next time you visit Minneapolis.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ButcherandBoar
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Butcherandtheboar
Website: http://butcherandtheboar.com/

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Our other food-related writing:

Restaurant Reviews 2012: (redirects to our advertisement free travel blog)

• London, Part 1 - Hangin' With Dickens' Ghost At Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese
• The Anchor of Rowhedge (England)
• The Green Room - Colchester, England

2013

• It Was Just Begging For It...[Cheesecake]
• Cooking With Frank: Egyptian Spice Sauce

2012

• Cooking With Frank: Venison Heart Ragout
• Hot Water Bath Canning
• Cooking With Frank: Green Tomato Chutney
• Zucchini Coming Out Our Ears
• Weekend Recap (Tomatoes)
• From River to Plate in Under Four Hours
• Cooking With Frank: A BBQ Dinner
• White Bread, For The Zombie Apocalypse
• Romancing The Sandwich 

2011

• Cooking With Frank
• Cooking Shepherds Pie With Us, Drunk
• Cooking With Frank, Ratatouille 
• Cooking With Frank: Zombies & Brains...Oh My
• Cooking With Frank: Venison Tenderloin
• The Enlightenment of an Englishmen: Part 1

Maybe...We Babble

We've been feeling pretty woozy the last two days. Mentally foggy. We've been powering through.

Some sort of achy pressure in our head. Maybe we've been overdoing the cardio workouts...maybe we need more carbs. Maybe we're eating too many.

Maybe Spring needs to get here, and the snow needs to leave...

We're skipping the gym today, and all we want to do is eat hot dogs and watch the news. That's weird.

Massage Therapy appointment this afternoon, maybe it will help.

Oh, and for your entertainment...

The future...

(Not every blog post has to be a winner...)

Oh, What A Relief It Is: Deep Tissue Massage

After a year and a half we were finally able to get it together enough to find a massage therapist. Luckily the connection came through James' new job. She does house-calls too. And the price is beyond reasonable for the service (deep tissue massage).

While we prefer male masseuses, (it has to do with how deep, large, numerous, and hard the knots are - requiring considerable strength to maneuver), she was able to do some good work to start, and together we created a regiment to alleviate 75% of the pain over a six-to-eight week period. (it's understood it will never be all gone, but at least it can be managed a bit without OTC or prescription pain relievers)

Once again we're back on the table, just in time. It wasn't as bad as it was in winter (January to April) of 2011 yet, but some days and nights it was getting close in the same level of excruciating pain, with the perpetual headaches, tension, knots, head-to-toe body pain, sleepless nights tossing and turning. It only took about 45 minutes to the pain to start creeping back, but at least it was something.

So, there's hope...once again.

We're almost going to feel human again. Almost.

(P.S. still waiting for all the names of the sellers to be inked on the purchase agreement for the house *fingers crossed*)

When Anxiety Attacks At Home

This is a two post morning. The post from earlier today was started Yesterday, and we hate having to work on a post not from the day we are in. Does that makes sense?

Anyway.

Our massage therapist who usually comes on Tuesdays to give us deep tissue massages at our apartment is gone on holidays for six weeks or more, and he never contacted us with a substitute therapist who does house calls like he said he would. The reason we have a massage therapist that makes house call is because we don't like leaving the house all the time, only if we want to; so if we have an appointment and don't feel up to going, we are liable to skip it all together.

We are feeling, and have been feeling, anxious all week. We are not sure if it is because of the increasing pain in our neck and shoulder, or not. The pain is blinding and burning, and highly concentrated in the solid mass of muscle tension and knots we carry in our left shoulder. Yesterday we didn't drink any coffee and it didn't see to make a difference in the level of anxiety. We don't know what to do about the pain.

At least the headaches has subsided for a bit, but we'd rather have the headaches we've been having than this pain and anxiety in the rest of our body; mostly we are happy that we don't have all three right now.

It doesn't feel good, the pain or the anxiety. There is no reason for this impending attack, necessarily. Our life has become simplified in a way so that we don't have to experience this, which is probably making us more anxious. Anxious about anxiety.

Our plan to manage this, because we don't believe in medications, is writing about it, like we are now, and to try to talk ourselves into leaving the apartment today to enjoy the nice weather, and to go buy a new summer dress. We are not in agreement on leaving the house. One thinks we should stay in and paint, but it seems pretty clear that this shaking and anxiety, and feeling in our head, will not benefit the new painting we are working on.

We don't know what to do. 

This Is Not A Blog Post

That title makes no sense…probably; or maybe it does if you have studied art and Magritte...and...meh…

For once we're not here to say "Hey, we've been drinking, so we can't post shit tonight".

Nope.

Plus we've gotten quite a few lectures about our drinking lately, from friends on Twitter; plus Fabulous People said that while she doesn't fear for our safety, because she knows where we live and it's plenty safe - she does fear for our liver. We drink about three nights a week though; we don't find that excessive. If anyone else wants to weigh in on their concern you can go ahead and post it at the bottom of this entry in the comments section where you will get a "Thank you for your concern but we are mostly adults here" statement. So there you have that.

Instead we aren't really writing anything significant tonight because our head is pounding from the deep tissue massage we had a couple of hours ago (we usually get the on Tuesdays for chronic pain issues from the car accident)...or we'd delve right into a rambling rant on this piece of art (Magritte's, This Is Not A Pipe), a piece we've referenced in our writing more than once; and at one point, even in a poem.

Tonight we're here to say...we were just working, albeit slowly because sentence structure does not seem to be our forte this evening, on the story about when we started culinary school; about Partner In Crime, the girl we mentioned in yesterdays post; about when we met her, fell in love/lust with her - then met another girl who fell in love with us, while The Other Girl fell in love with Standby; at one point we were living with a boyfriend and sleeping with another guy (AND Standby AND this girl who was fell in love with us).


Sounds confusing? Try unravelling in all into something YOU'LL be able to understand. No wonder our head is pounding. We're gonna come off like a giant team of sluts with this one - I'd like to think if I had had more influence at this point none of it would have happened. Promise though...we're not sluts…despite what it looks like. We’re generally a team of sluts dedicated to one person at a time, if a relationship is something that we end up in.

                                    

New here and don't know who Standby is? Yeah, he's just another fucker we pseudo-dated...go to the tab up there named Recommendations...scroll down to the Relationships section...there is some stuff written about him...there is a whole lot of stuff written about him all over this blog, actually, stuff written by The Other Girl, and by some of us. Stuff he found and got really angry about. The Other Girl was in love with him, some of us liked him; I disliked him immensely. He was a giant asshole; I knew it but The Other Girl didn't heed any of the warnings...

New here and don't know who WE are? You'll have to catch up using the same Recommendations tab, or over look there to the left where there are important groupings of links.

Anyway, we're working on that story...

...and here are some things that made us smile tonight....

When Anxiety Attacks

Please note: all links provided are internal links for reference purposes - we are not trying to sell anything.

Like many days of the week where we have a writing topic in play, we end up switching gears to address things that are vexing to us, if only to clear out the space for concerns and topics of other natures; like more stories about our life to help us heal, and interests such as hopes and fears, relationships, therapy, art, entertainment, social media, opinions, reading and writing, food, music, life, and endless ranges of interests that encompass our mind, and daily life.

Writing makes us feel good, we find comfort in written words; playing with them, rearranging them, using them to convey our feelings, emotions and thoughts; it's really one of the reasons we like Twitter so much, and why we write everyday.

On Tuesdays we have one-and-a-half to two hour deep tissue massage therapy session to address the pain that riddles our body from our car accident. Today was our third session.

The first two sessions were wonderful, and really helped take away much of the pain that had accumulated over the years, and some of the new pain. Pain The Other Girl covered up the last two years by smoking copious amounts of marijuana, a habit we kicked just under two months ago. Within days of cessation the pain began to seep in, and within a couple of weeks it felt like we'd been hit by a bulldozer, which when coupled with our mental illnesses, and all the havoc that that issue has created recently with former friends and lovers, just about killed us.

The pain was making us near crippled, so badly so, that practical strangers could could see the anguish, not flash, but radiate, from our face and body. We could barely make the short walk home, and we didn't want to live anymore. A sufferer of chronic pain that we encounter each week suggested we might have Fibromyalgia, which makes sense because it's chronic pain and we harbor most of the symptoms. Wonderful.

The first two sessions of these past two weeks have done wonders for taking the edge off of the pain, providing almost complete relief for a 20 minute period following each tremendously painful massage. If you've never had a deep tissue massage, then you might not understand how painful they can be. It has taken the crippled feeling out of our life, but the pain still ebbs and flows, rising to it's peak by the end of the day on some days.

Todays session left us very uncomfortable because of an anxiety attack, however, and this was disheartening.

About three-quarters of the way through our massage, we felt the creep of anxiety. It started around the edges of our brain and can only be described as a feeling like the walls of our cranium are caving inward. Darkness falls. The feeling causes our heartbeat to rise, or breath to become short, and our head to fill with swirling static, not unlike a lethargic tornado. We actually don't know if this is what anxiety is, we only know that this is how we describe that uncomfortable feeling that makes us fight back tears of fear when we become scared of the combinations of these events taking place within our body. Sometimes you can see it in our eyes. We have very expressive eyes.

We lay there on the massage table, with this near stranger attempting to remove the pain from our body, while causing great pain at the same time. We are suddenly uncomfortable and want him to leave. He tries to talk to us when we are not screaming "mother of god" or cursing under our breath; or yelling "fuck off" at on of our cat who is making distractions and increasing the swirl in our head. This causes the massage therapist to laugh. He doesn't understand. Did we mention he comes to our home to provide this service? It's the best.

On normal days we are chatty, sometimes we fade in and out of consciousness, on the edges of our mind we see #hashtags and in-vision Facebook messages from the man we love, that we know we will never receive. It's almost like a dream state; a state hard achieved these days when we can barely get more than 4 hours of sleep, but for the weekends, when we can pull a solid 6 from somewhere, magically. Insomnia. Time doesn't exists. But it did today.

We are no stranger to anxiety, and The Other Girl suffered from it long before we did. Behtany recalls their first anxiety attack, at 18 years of age, while attending a street festival with a boyfriend, TOGs first love, prior to meeting The Ex Husband. She remembers experiencing feelings in their head which made them angry; that made them want to scream at and shove people in the crowd. 

These days most of our anxiety comes from going to work and dealing with the public; and sometimes being out in public in general. It doesn't always happen. Lately it happens more because we are afraid of the people from our Home, who might verbally attack us in public, who may have found this blog already and put the pieces together connecting us to it; because they don't understand who we are, or what has happened to us now, and they don't believe we are ill - they only know that The Other Girl has disappeared, and they think we are her.

This anxiety attack tonight made us very sad, we hope it doesn't continue. We felt we needed to write about it because we know some of our readers experience these feelings, and it's nice to find out you are not alone. For everyone else, even if you can't grasp from these words how it might feel to have an anxiety attack, a storm ready to cascade over you; it can help you understand that the person who lashed out at you today, might just be trying to weather the storm they see on the horizon with their minds eye; and it's really not you that they are mad at; but sometimes it is.

Written by "Stabby" (he will not give us his name yet)

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More info on Fibromyalgia: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001463/